We use search volume index (SVI) for a CEO’s name and stock ticker from Google Trends to measure CEO publicity, and examine the competing hypotheses on its relation to tax avoidance. On the one hand, CEOs who receive more attention from retail investors may engage in tax evasion activities to meet investors’ performance expectations; on [...]

Corporate Knights have released the 2018 ranking of the 100 most sustainable corporations in the world. You can find the 2018 Global 100 results here Furthermore, they have also released the progress report, which can be found here

This paper interfaces with two controversies in the literature: how to reign in powerful CEOs, and whether and when shareholders gain governance mandates, such as those in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 and NYSE/NASDAQ listing rules. We use the concurrent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 and NYSE/NASDAQ listing rule changes as [...]

We conducted a type of “field experiment” to evaluate how difficult it will be for companies to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) published in June of 2017. These recommendations are based on the four categories of governance, strategy, risk management, and targets and metrics. Beneath these are 11 [...]

FSR – danske revisorer (Danish Auditor Association) has published an analysis of the status of the non-financial reporting for all the listed Danish companies with more than 500 employees. The analysis showed many interesting insights – one of them being that, in general, there is a need for increased robustness to the reporting. If the [...]

In this article in the Danish national paper Berlingske Business, Center for ESG Research shows the 3 stages of ESG activities that pension funds can go through - where the Danish pension funds in general only have reached the first stage of negative screening, which has a lot of drawbacks. But what could they do [...]

How do you measure CO2 or Employee Turnover Ratio? Which integrated metrics can Number of Full Time Employees be part of? Can you combine share price with pollution? How do you report on compensation in a useful way? - and how should that be used for by the investors? Are there ways to report non-financial [...]

We examine the relation between the gender diversity on boards of corporations and the levels of information asymmetry in the stock market. Prior evidence suggests that the presence of women on director boards increases the quantity and quality of public disclosure by firms, and we therefore expect firms with higher gender diversity on their boards [...]

We examine the effect of the introduction of Morningstar’s Sustainability Rating in March 2016 on U.S. mutual equity fund flows. Using panel regressions, propensity score matching, and an event study methodology we find strong and robust evidence that retail investors shift money away from low-rated and into high-rated funds. The effect is driven by the [...]

This study examines whether and under what conditions corporate sustainability performance is reflected in bank loan prices. By taking the sustainability performance of the lending bank into account, I show that borrowers with strong sustainability performance pay lower loan spreads than borrowers with weak sustainability performance--however, only when the lending bank exhibits strong sustainability performance. [...]